Way back in 1975, shortly after a fluke court decision legalized marijuana in Alaska for the first time, HIGH TIMES sent a writer north to the Last Frontier. In Fairbanks, the writer met a guy who went by the name of Nordhoff.

Nordhoff made a claim that piqued the interest of pot fans across the Lower 48:

“Nordhoff carefully cleans out the bowl of a fossilized walrus tusk pipe and fills it with green leaf. The buds are huge, the size of a Malemute’s paw. He carefully picks one apart and crumbles it. ’Matanuska Thunderfuck’ he declares, firing it up. ‘The finest pot grown in the 50 states.”

“This weed is so strong it grows through the snow to find the sun,” Nordhoff said. “Farmers in the Valley plant it alongside patches of cabbage so big it takes two men to carry them, tomatoes so big you have to cut them off with a chain saw.”

The valley Nordhoff was talking about isn’t just any valley. He was talking about the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, Alaska’s agricultural heartland. And he was right about the vegetables, which remain gigantic to this day. At the annual state fair in Palmer, farmers display freakishly-large, world-record-sized produce. Two years ago, dentist Steve Hubacek won the Giant Cabbage Weigh-Off with a 117.95 pound specimen.